1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to food processing of bulk fast food items and, more particularly, to food processing, storing and dispensing of bulk fast food items, such as French fries, at a quick-service type restaurant.
2. Background Art
In restaurants, especially quick-service restaurants, fast, consistent, efficient and safe food preparation is essential for a successful operation. The quality of the prepared food depends in large part on the consistency of food preparation and processing and storage of the food items after cooking operations have been completed.
Consistency in food preparation and storage times for cooked food items may vary as a result of many factors. For example, people engaged in food preparation often must perform multiple tasks at frequencies that vary with time because of constantly varying customer demand throughout the day. For example, lunchtime and dinnertime may be extremely busy while other periods may be relatively slow. The product mix can vary from hour to hour and day to day. As a result, the consistency and quality of food may vary. Difficulties in proper scheduling of food production during peak and non-peak periods can cause customer delays and/or stale, wasted or unusable food.
The food must be cooked using correct procedures and must be processed after cooking under appropriate conditions for the proper time. Additionally, because of time constraints on the employees, especially at rush times such as lunch or dinner periods, the employees are needed to work efficiently during bursts of activity and any time or effort savings device that assists the operator in completing his or her tasks is important in enabling the reduction in work effort while maintaining employee satisfaction in their work environment.
Food preparation can be labor intensive, and thus, the labor cost can be a large portion of the total cost of the prepared food. Although quick-service restaurants have existed for many years and now number in the tens of thousands, such establishments generally utilize manual labor to prepare and process food. While there have been various improvements in commercial equipment used for cooking and storage of food in quick-service restaurants, such restaurants are believed to be substantially all manually operated and relatively labor intensive. Providing more efficient, better and safer working conditions to the employees of such restaurants is necessary to the well being of the employees and to the efficient operation of such restaurants.
Frying bulk items in a deep fryer has traditionally been done using mesh wire baskets which include a plurality of openings that permit hot oil, but not the bulk food items which have been placed into the baskets, to pass through the wire basket walls. In most conventional manually operated deep fryer stations, after the frying operation is complete, the operator lifts the wire mesh basket containing the bulk food items out of the oil or shortening in the frying vat, and rests it on a hook on a rear wall of the fryer. The hook is usually disposed on an opposite side of the basket from the side connecting to the handle of the fry basket. The fry basket is attached to the hook for a sufficient period of drip time to permit excess oil to drip from the bulk food items, for example, French fries, back into the frying vat, which is disposed below the basket attachment. After the appropriate time has elapsed, and excess oil has dripped from the bulk food items, but not so long as to appreciably cool the bulk food items, the operator then once again will pick up the basket by the handle, and turn the basket over to dump the bulk food items into a bulk food processing station, usually adjacent the fry vat, where the bulk food items are then optionally seasoned and packaged for dispensing to the customer.
However, it has been found that the procedure of turning over the basket to dump the bulk food items therefrom may be unsanitary, ergonomically taxing on the operator, and may result in less than ideal working conditions. For example, turning the basket over, even when performed over a surface, may produce oil splattering due to centripetal forces that act on remaining drops of oil that may be left on the wire mesh, but are not large enough to fall off by gravitational action during the drip time. Oil flung from the rotating basket often ends up on the floor adjacent the fry station, thereby possibly creating a slip hazard and or unsanitary conditions.
Additionally, the turning over of the wire mesh basket manually by the operator requires having a firm grip on the handle and then an unnatural action of the arm which must simultaneously twist and lift the basket into position so as to enable the dumping of the bulk food items into the bulk food hopper or processing tray. To permit such an unnatural action, handles to date are required to extend horizontally from the fry basket wall, so that turning the basket over does not change the height of the location where the fry basket ends up. Thus, the horizontally extending fry basket handle is susceptible to seeping or flowing fluids, such as oil from the fryers, when the handle is turned over at an angle so that it is below the relative level of the fry basket.
Accordingly, a need exists for a commercially suitable bulk food dispensing, storage and packaging device, system and method for fried foods, that includes a fry basket that can be operated efficiently and with a minimum of human effort in the manipulation of the wire basket while helping to retain manual control over the basket. A need for an ergonomically user friendly apparatus and device that avoids the problem of oil splattering when the wire baskets are overturned is also apparent.